Barrow Elementary, like many schools in Clarke County, was somewhat diverse a year ago, but a major change in the way students are assigned to schools has made Barrow more like the overall Athens community.

Along with the racial balance, Barrow - at the edge of the University of Georgia campus and in the heart of the well-to-do Five Points neighborhood - became more economically diverse. Half of the students come from either wealthy or middle-class families, while the other 50 percent come from poorer families.

When Clarke County elementary school students returned to the classroom last year, about half of them went to different schools under a plan to assign each student to a single school close to his home.

While the rezoning shift made Barrow more diverse, other schools either didn't change as much or became even more homogenous.

Howard B. Stroud this year lost about half of its Hispanic student population, and most other schools, like Fowler Drive or Gaines, saw little change. Ninety percent of those schools' students are black or Hispanic.

Diversity - or racially and economically mixed schools - are good at improving student achievement, especially for low-income and minority students who typically perform the lowest on state tests, according to Steve Suitts, vice president of the Southern Education Foundation, an Atlanta-based education advocacy group.

"If a community needs all students to achieve at higher levels, one of the advantages of diversity is you create a broader spectrum of students which can be a factor in helping to improve student achievement scores," Suitts said.

At Barrow Elementary, the change means that black students' test scores now will fall under the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Law. After the rezoning, the school now has a large enough group to be counted as an official minority group that must improve each year, MacMillan said.

"I know the impact that label can have on you," he said. "I would admit to waking up a little more frequently in the night thinking about it because I've got numbers in that subgroup and I'm going to be more responsible for that group."

The rezoning was meant to save the Clarke County School District money in transportation costs and create stronger neighborhood support for schools - not necessarily make schools more diverse.

Twenty years ago, Clarke school officials agreed on a plan to bus students to different schools in order to improve diversity. The busing plan was later scrapped after some parents complained the district had unfairly bused black students to schools far away from their homes.

In place of busing, the school district implemented a controlled choice plan, which allowed parents to pick their favorite schools and enter their choices into a lottery system. Controlled choice remained in place in various forms until fall 2009, when school district administrators used new school attendance zones to assign students to a school based on location.

Over the past 15 years, the percentage of white students in Clarke County has declined, while the number of Hispanic students climbed. In 1996, one year after controlled choice was implemented, white students accounted for 36 percent of the school district. Today, they hardly make up 20 percent.

While some schools like Barrow may get more diverse, most neighborhood schools won't, said Sheneka Williams, an associate professor in the College of Education at the University of Georgia.